bookkeeping: playing hookey
Jul. 23rd, 2003 12:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennynew necklace story: 1,276 words
Yes, I should have been working on my dissertation--which is what I'll probably do this afternoon once I've made bread and had lunch. But, dammit, the story wanted to go, and I wanted to go with it. It's almost 3,300 words long already, and if it goes on as it seems to wish to, it's probably going to end up novella-length, 10k or more. There's a way to tell it that would make it much shorter--short-story length (i.e., around 5k)--but I can't figure out if that's the way it ought to be told until I've written it the long way, because the short version would have to do a lot with compression and suggestion and small, carefully placed flashbacks, and I have to know the whole thing before I can pick and choose for details. I'm not sure whether one way would or will be better than the other, but they would definitely be very very different.
Which is weird. Normally, I don't get to make this sort of choice. It's rather unsettling.
Yes, I should have been working on my dissertation--which is what I'll probably do this afternoon once I've made bread and had lunch. But, dammit, the story wanted to go, and I wanted to go with it. It's almost 3,300 words long already, and if it goes on as it seems to wish to, it's probably going to end up novella-length, 10k or more. There's a way to tell it that would make it much shorter--short-story length (i.e., around 5k)--but I can't figure out if that's the way it ought to be told until I've written it the long way, because the short version would have to do a lot with compression and suggestion and small, carefully placed flashbacks, and I have to know the whole thing before I can pick and choose for details. I'm not sure whether one way would or will be better than the other, but they would definitely be very very different.
Which is weird. Normally, I don't get to make this sort of choice. It's rather unsettling.
